See our previous report on Brain Death
Since some new followers have joined us recently, I thought I’d share my personal experience with organ procurement.
Back in the late 1980s, during residency training, I came in for night call and was told to go up to ICU and prepare a young man for organ harvesting. I believed my authorities when they told me that the brain dead young man I was to anesthetize for organ procurement was dead. Even though he had a normal blood pressure, heart rate, great oxygen saturation, was warm and with good color, and was making urine. In fact, he was more stable than most other ICU patients I had anesthetized. I was so brainwashed that I wasn’t even going to give him actual anesthesia, just a paralyzing drug and meds to keep his blood pressure and heart rate controlled so as not to damage the organs. But when I presented my anesthetic plan of care to my supervisor, he said I should give a consciousness blocking drug “just in case.” I did as I was told, and the young man responded to surgery just like anyone else, requiring the same types and amounts of anesthesia. When I told this story to a pathologist friend, she said that when she removes organs during an autopsy, she doesn’t need to give any of these drugs.
This bothered me enough that eventually I did my own research. I discovered that there have never been any facts, studies, or evidence that these people are dead. Doctors, lawyers, philosophers, and scholars have been debating the veracity of brain death for nearly sixty years in the medical literature, but the public is never told that there is any controversy. I wrote a book, “The Brain Death Fallacy,” and maintain a website Respect for Human Life, to provide fully informed consent for the general public on these issues.
The new American Academy of Neurology brain death guideline now explicitly states that brain death can be declared in the presence of ongoing brain function. It has long been known that 20% of people declared BD still have electrical activity on EEG, and over 50% have ongoing function of a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. BUT the Uniform Determination of Death Act stipulates that there be an irreversible cessation of ALL functions of the entire brain for a legal diagnosis of brain death.
It is troubling that not only is the brain death concept unproven, but also the way doctors are diagnosing it does not comply with the law. That’s why I do what I can to give the public a place at the table in this debate.
https://x.com/heidiklessigmd/status/1929166242772050006